gentleman's quarterly
by CherryFlavoredChalk
Summary: Step one in learning How Not To Be Awkward: dye your best friend's boyfriend's hair in the kitchen sink. Use juice packets if necessary.


**A/N: **I don't know what this is. I am tired and it is nice out. I think that Axel and Sora deserve nice things written about them, instead of screaming Roxas/Riku-is-dead-I'll-have-you-instead dragging angst.

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_gentleman's quarterly_

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You dyed Axel's hair red under the faucet in Olette's kitchen instead of going to school one day. You'd woken up late anyways; ten minutes past the alarm where Maroon 5 (piece of shit) was singing out getting out from underneath Axel's cell phone. 9:45 a.m. You had test in Southern Literature and Axel had five minutes to shower and bike to the local instrument shop.

"I'm not awake." Axel said blearily. He was standing, slumped against the bright blue of Olette's doorway with a hand scraping against the dip of his navel. His eyes were mostly shut and you pictured careful slits of jade underneath the black lashes and stark skin.

Axel Royce was a painting in motion.

"Well, I'm not ready." You were still crumpled up in Olette's bed with your feet sticking out from underneath the blankets. There were small prints of ducks on them; tiny yellow splotches that you could kind of make out without the use of contacts.

"Fuckin' shit." Axel grumbled. He stretched himself towards the ceiling and yawned widely against the bracket of his teeth, scratching at his bared stomach. You watched the frumpy cardigan move upwards without any real sense of lust. It was nearly ten in the morning and you were watching your best friend's boyfriend scratch himself like humans had never managed to evolve. Not so sexy. "I needa dye m'hair."

You made a face from underneath the countless duck-printed covers, feeling the slight skin of your nose wrinkle. "Here in America," you said lazily, "we speak English. Just sayin'."

Axel limply waved a hand at you and turned around, shifting his lanky frame into the kitchen. "The fuck out of here." he said nonchalantly, hips twitching and a hand groping for the back of his cardigan--which, on second thought, probably wasn't his as it seemed too small and had a slightly obnoxious appliqué flower on the back. It was a shade of purple that might have been called puce if Roxas was still here to be a snob about it. "Where's Olette? Get the fuck up, shortstack, and help me search."

You managed to twirl yourself out from Olette's bed with the blankets wrapped around you like the burqas Roxas had once showed you in his yellowed National Geographics. "I don't know, I think she has class." A casual inspection of the kitchen showed that Olette, as well as everyone else, had managed to vacate the house by a suitable time. There was, however, a note scribbled in eyeliner that said 'plz clean thnx ily' next to a Wonderbra that was flopping halfway out of the sink. Axel crumpled up the note and picked up the bra instead, lips pursed as he poked at the silk cups.

"Nice tit-holder, whoever this belongs to." he said approvingly. Your face crumpled up again in disgust. "Do you need to be so crude?"

"Lawd a' mercy." Axel sneered, laughing. "Excuse me for the crass, baby-blue-eyes. Didn't mean to twist your panties." He reached up and let loose his hair; it awkwardly stood in the air until he raked both hands through it in an attempt to calm it down. It didn't really work.

You laughed. Axel looked offended. "Sorry, but you look stupid right now."

"You look really stupid all the time." Axel sniffed. His fingers scrabbled for the small hand-mirror underneath the electric bill and held it up to his face. Relatively clean, with the exception of a smudge of something-or-the-other under the swell of his cheekbone and the sheen of grease that came from not washing. His hair was sticking uselessly to itself, dried out and brown against the bright cherry red of the dye job Roxas had performed three months ago.

"Lookin' like shit, boy-o." He sighed and put the mirror back down. You shrugged at him and poked at the electric bill, squinting at the name that had been neatly written on ballpoint next to the horrendous sum they owed. You looked back up again to see Axel smiling lopsidedly at you. "You wanna give it a go, So?"

You were all out of any sort of dye--Axel didn't fancy being blonde even if he would match Roxas and although the brown hair was natural to him, he wasn't too keen on letting it grow out either. There was a box of Midnight Blue Mango Passion under the sink next to the Clorox from Olette's goth phase, but that had been keeping camp under there for going on six years and was not to be trusted.

You could tell by the tick in Axel's eye that he was very, very close to becoming insane.

You held up the Easter egg dye from a year ago, shaking the pink liquid weakly. "Pink could be your color, you never know."

"Shut the fuck up."

"Kairi wears it all the time."

"Yeah, well, there's something wrong with that bint." Axel glowered at the egg dye and slumped over the table, bony fingers grabbing at his face. "Fuck. My _hair_."

You watched him uneasily, wishing that Olette was here to help out or that Roxas had delayed his departure just the tiniest bit. Fuck, I'm awkward you thought miserably. But Axel looked like he was about to cry (even though he'd said that he wasn't some naft poof, whatever that was Euro-speak for) and you weren't socially equipped for this, so you just blurted out, "Um, there's some Kool-Aid packets in the pantry. Roxas and me once dyed our hair with that when we were twelve, it didn't come out half bad."

Axel just looked at you.

**[x]**

You weren't so sure you remembered how to go about it, so you settled for dumping the powder over the dripping mess that was Axel's hair and massaging it in. Axel's hip was bony enough to cause physical pain by dipping into your foot, and the position you'd crafted--on top of the sink, with one leg swung over the side where it could balance on his hip while the other was pulled up to your chest--wasn't helping matters. Axel also kept wriggling and moaning about how his hair smelled like fruit punch and he wasn't _that_ gay.

It took four packets and afterwards you made him sit still at the table, one of Olette's duck blankets that you dragged out wrapped around his head. There were clumps of wet powder on his shoulders, sliding down his dampened cardigan and getting stuck in the flowers.

**[x]**

About two hours later--which was really much too late to have let it settle but Axel had requested a game and you'd had a very invigorating (no, really) game of Clue in which Miss Scarlet had killed someone with a wrench and you were arguing, the turban completely forgotten until Axel screeched, "HAIR!" and made you jump about a foot. The two you rushed to the bathroom, where you whipped the blanket off .

It was very silent, and then Axel squeaked, "…Am I maroon?"

"Hm. Well, that is an interesting question." You squinted. "Kind of?"

"Like a sexy maroon? Gentleman's quarterly maroon? Like that?"

Wait, what did that even mean? "Oh, uh, yeah."

"I'm ugly."

"I'm not answering that."

"It wasn't a question, you goddamn _poof_."

There was a bit of unfriendly scuffling and the appliqué flower got torn off in a fit of anger, but you both managed to calm down within the hour. You attempted to make Axel seem like a dashing young man and not a confused transvestite by marking light freckles on his face with Olette's eye-pencil, but he remained ungrateful, even when you told him that it made him seem much more Anne of Green Gables than Rock Horror Picture Show's Magenta, which was definitely an improvement.

He slammed the door in your face when you offered to dye his hair again. Honestly. Typical Axel.

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**standard disclaimers.**


End file.
